SV-Wolf's Bike Blog

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sv-wolf
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#1191 Unread post by sv-wolf »

Hi blues. Yes, you're right about taking matches. I've added it to my list. I'm also thinking about taking an electronic lighter. Neither matches nor ordinary lighters work very well in the Pamirs at 15,000 feet.

Get a load of this. I don't usually share anything from the Daily Mail, the UK's most rabid and garbage-filled right-wing propaganda rag. But this is great. I rode almost exactly this same route nine years ago. (They should have asked me. I could have saved them a lot of time and effort.) Scotland is great any time of year. I'll be riding it again later this month at the start of my trek.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/trave ... ruins.html

I now only have a week left, and Gabriel still hasn't managed to finish the panniers. I'm waiting to hear from him tomorrow when they will be ready and then I'll go down to Somerset and pick them up. If they are ready to pick up by Monday I won't panic. If they are not ready till Tuesday, I'll panic but will probably cope. If... (not going there!)

Even though I managed to cross sixteen things off my to-do list today, there are still fifty-three left on it. I've noticed, though, that for every one I cross off, I add two more on the bottom of the list. Right now, I'm not sure whether to identify with Achilles or the tortoise. Or should it be the turtle. I feel like I'm underwater trying to swim. I've also confirmed that I am not nearly as motivated by enthusiasm as I am by anxiety. Oh my god! Seven days to go!
Hud

“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Re: SV-Wolf's Bike Blog

#1192 Unread post by blues2cruise »

Anxiety sounds normal.....fear of the unknown....

It's an incredible adventure....and if you decide you're not enjoying yourself....you can always go home. :mrgreen:
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#1193 Unread post by Hanson »

Hud,

Your story about retrieving your DR in the cold was both entertaining and a painful reminder. When I was a kid I had a security job and often rode home at about 3 in the morning. One night was so cold that when I got off the highway and came to a stoplight, I simply fell over. My legs where unresponsive frozen logs and I was surprised that they would not move when I wanted to put my feet on the pavement and down I went. After getting up, I looked around in total embarrassment, but luckily there was no one to witness my shame. I picked up the bike, and rode the rest of the way home.

I now have electric gear made by Warm and Safe and riding in the cold is not much of a problem. The biggest issue I now experience is with my breath freezing on the inside of my face shield. When it gets down into the 50s... I add the electric jacket, and when it gets down into the lower 40s, I add my electric glove liners. I have a duel controller that allows me to adjust the temperature on the jacket and glove liners independently, and I have ridden comfortable in temperatures down into the low 20s.

I wish you safe travels,
Richard
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#1194 Unread post by sv-wolf »

It's been an eventful week - the week of my departure for foreign parts. On Monday I had an off. I was riding the DR into the dealers at Letchworth to pick up spare clutch and throttle cables and an emergency replacement chain. It was a fine day. I was in a good mood. The DR is so flickable, and there is a lovely tight S-bend coming off the longabout on the outskirts of Letchworth. Completely forgetting I was riding on knobblies and not on sports tyres, I leaned her right over into the second bend, and she just kept going - down. I was completely unhurt, and apart from a twisted yoke (easily fixed) and a mangled handguard, so was the bike. When I picked her up, she started immediately as though nothing had happened. I gave thanks for the DR's reputation for being bombproof. The only real downside of the episode was that I tore a hole in the sleeve of my brand new jacket. A friend has patched it for me and it will have to do.

On Tuesday, I travelled down to Somerset to pick up the panniers, get fitted with a new set of hardwearing tyres and get a few last minute things from Gabriel. He has made a brilliant job of them and I'm very pleased. I usually take the back roads whenever I go down to that part of the country. On this occasion they were covered with very slippery mud and there was a huge several-mile-long diesel spill outside Wells. I didn't want to come back in the dark and in the rain on greasy roads and on new tyres so I opted to head for the M4 motorway instead. There was heavy cloud cover that night which kept the temperatures reasonably warm, but it did mean intermittent rain and very little light. My headlaps were not so good on the country roads between Wells and the M4 and I had a number of scary moments. The real letdown came on the M4 itself, when I saw a sign saying that it was closed between junctions 14 and 12. There was nothing to do but follow the diversion signs, which took me out into the wilds of Wiltshire. And there they dumped me. Suddenly there were no more signs. I did the only thing I could do, which was to follow my nose (I don't have a GPS). But on country roads at night in very poor light, my sense of direction let me down hard because an hour-and-a-half later, with sixty additional miles on the clock, I ended up right back where I had started! The second time I followed the diversion, I found the missing sign. It had fallen off a stand by the side of the road and into the long grass. It was a tedious ride, through lots of 30 and 40 mph limits, and I didn't get home until midnight, utterly stressed, utterly worn out.

The rest of the week was a blur, filled with final preparations and lack of sleep. On Tuesday, two days before I was due to leave, I rang the insurance company to confirm all the details and was told that I wasn't covered. The broker had sold me a duff policy. In short because I was intending to travel away from home for more than 180 days the policy was void. Without a valid European insurance policy I would be riding illegally. Great! I soon discovered that no British insurance companies offer European cover for trips longer than 180 days (most only offer 90).

After several hours of panicked searching on the web I found three German companies that would insure me for the trip for between £990 and a cool £1,300. And that's only for third party cover. There was no way I was going to pay that. The only thing for me to do was to reschedule my trip to keep it within the 180 days. That meant cutting out some of the early and later parts of it. I've now confirmed that with the insurance company, and I'm back in business.

I'm still going away up to the Orkney Islands tomorrow to the north of Scotland to see the eclipse, but instead of going on from there to Ireland and then directly onto the continent, I'm returning home on the 25th. I'll set out for the main trip on the 5 April. It's not such a big change. It just means I won't get to see my wife's daughter or the grandkids in Ireland as arranged. I knew my plans would change - probably constantly - in response to changing circumstances (especially with the current tensions in the Middle East, Russia and the Ukraine; I just didn't think they would change this early.
Hud

“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Re: SV-Wolf's Bike Blog

#1195 Unread post by blues2cruise »

Stay upright..... :P
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#1196 Unread post by sv-wolf »

I’m back now from the Scottish part of the trip which I did with Tim, an old university friend and roommate. My DR is no match for Tim’s newly acquired Pan (1993 reg, in immaculate condition.) but it can still be a nippy beast when you need to put some miles on. It does have some quirks and peculiarities, though. The side-stand is ridiculously long for the bike. I’ve had an inch and a quarter taken off it and it still makes the bike unstable if it is leaning into even a very moderate upslope – and that’s even more noticeable now that the rear shock is weighted down with laden paniers. If it has been in one gear for a while, it doesn’t like to change and has to be forcibly persuaded.

17 March: Fast and chilly motorway ride (M5/M6/M74/M8/A82) from Malvern up to Tyndrum, north of Loch Lomond. The A82 from Glasgow to Tyndrum is always a lot of fun, especially the narrow section, jammed between vertical cliffs on one side and the shores of Loch Lomond on the other. I discovered that I eat about three times as much food as Tim and need more frequent food breaks. Tim is discovering that I also take about three times as long as anyone else to do anything. (I’ve never worked out why.) He is handling this with patience and good grace. The only other person staying in the hostel in Tyndrum was feisty Tasmin, who’d driven over from Aberdeen for a day’s climbing. Both Tim and Tasmin just happened to have woodwind instruments on them and had a short session that evening in the hostel dining room.

18 March. Another day of riding. From Tyndrun we headed north for Rannoch Moor and Glen Coe. We’d made such good progress yesterday that beyond Glen Coe we had time to take a scenic detour round the Moidart peninsular via the ferry. The road round Moidart soon turns into a bumpy, twisty single-track affair that had it not been for the glorious scenery would have felt like a fairground ride. I’m sure there are some ugly places in Scotland, but if so I have yet to find them. We had lunch in Fort William before heading up the Great Glen to Inverness and then on to a campsite at Dornoch. By mid-afternoon it became clear that my expensive brand new camera had stopped working – so no pics then. Similarly, when Tim's pan overheated in rush hour traffic in Inverness, it became clear that his fan was kaput. Tim worried discretely about it for a while and then got on with the ride. I fumed all the way up to Dornoch about my camera. We got separated in Inverness, with me doing most of the fretting on this occasion, but managing to give the impression that I was taking it all in my stride. We met up again on the outskirts of Dornoch, where we had planned to find a campsite. Dornoch, which looks on the map like a small and not very significant town, surprised us with the remains of a medieval city centre, complete with castle and tiny cathedral. More immediately practical were a welcoming pub and a Chinese chippy.

19 March. We packed up the tents early and set off up the A9/A99 coastal route to Gilles and the ferry to the Orkneys. We breakfasted comfortably in a chintzy café in Wick. On the way to Gilles we passed through John o’Groats which has always seemed less like a town to me than a large field with a few houses half-heartedly scatted about within it. The ferry pulled into St Margaret Hope in South Ronalsay. The island guards the southern entrance to Scappa Floe home of the British naval fleet in times of conflict, and its southern shoes are spattered with gun emplacements and other wartime constructions. South Ronalsay is connected to the main Orkney island of Mainland via three ‘Churchill Barriers’, causeways which serve to block seaborne access to Scappa Flow from the east but which also carry the road between a string of islets. On either side of the barriers, the remains of rusting hulks poked out from, the water. We rode to the capital, Kirkwall, found a supermarket, an information bureau and a hostel on the edge of town.

20 March. We got up early and rode to the Ring of Brognar to watch the eclipse. The ring is a dramatic Neolithic stone circle (the largest in the UK after Avebury) on a narrow spit of land between two lochs, one fresh, one saline. About seventy people had already gathered there waiting for the big moment, and were sharing eclipse-watching tinted glasses and home-made biscuits. Tim was expecting to find a bunch of ‘hippies’ and travellers, but for the most part they turned out to be Orkney folk who were making a morning of it with dogs, hampers, cameras and a lot of bustle. Half the people there seemed to be civil servants. (If you aren’t a farmer, a craft worker or a shop keeper in the Orkneys, then it’s likely that you will work for the government.)

Far from obscuring the eclipse, the thin layer of cloud scudding across Orkney skies (and they are vast), eliminated some of the harshness of the sun’s light and made the event easier to watch. By wearing my lid and watching through my tinted visor any remaining glare was removed and gave me a ringside view. As the moon ate away at the sun, the air became colder and the day darkened, though not as much as I had expected. I was astonished that the sun’s penumbral energy is so great that even a 98% eclipse can do no more than dim the daylight. My one disappointment was that in an island full of sheep there were none nearby. I’d been told during an eclipse they lie down and go to sleep. The small child in me really, really wanted to see that.

Later that morning we rode up to the west coast of Mainland on a road that was almost lost among the island’s pale green rolling hillsides. It wasn’t an entirely pleasant ride. On an island with no trees, the Orkney blustery winds can do some interesting things to a motorcycle’s line of travel. We’d come to see the Neolithic village of Scarra Bray, which is billed in the tourist brochures as the best preserved site of its kind in Europe. And it was seriously impressive. As the wind continued to thrash around us, one of the wardens, wrapped up from head to toe in an enormous black windcheater so that only her eyes peeped out, gave us an extended history and explanation of the site. Like other native Orcadians we met, her speech was slow and soft but with an attractive lightness. I can see why so many people fall in love with these islands.

A new brewery miles from anywhere and keen to attract the tourists provided us with a restaurant lunch – one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time. The bread was wonderful, light, fluffy and melt in the mouth. Orcadians certainly know how to keep you happy and sell you stuff. From there we continued our Neolithic ramble, stopping off at the Stenness stones and getting an eccentric guided tour of Maeshowe, one of the best preserved neolithic burial chambers in the area.

The guide books are keen to point out that the Orkneys have a mild climate. Most of the Atlantic depressions that affect Scotland and the rest of the UK miss the islands, so the summers are warm for their latitudes and the winters are brief. If snow does fall, it doesn’t linger. The two most noticeable features are the winds and the skies. The winds are inescapable and the skies appear to have been stretched out in all directions. They are vast. From an Orcadian’s perspective the world must look very horizontal. We rode back into Kirkwall and spent a while in the city’s Norse cathedral, getting an impromptu guided tour who was clearly in love with the place and wanted to show us its carvings of Green Men and its Sheila na gig. After dark we rode out to Deerness, a peninsular on the eastern side of Mainland, where we were told we would find the only campsite open at this time of year. It turned out not to be a campsite but a big lawn behind the Deerness Community Centre, which welcomed campers. After parents had picked up their children from an evening event, the cheery warden showed us round the centre and gave us the keys – just in case we wanted to let ourselves in to make a cup of tea. ‘Just hang the keys behind the door and close it when you leave in the morning’, she said. Where else would you find such trust!

21 March. We rode back from Deerness to the ferry, along country roads, stopping off to look at the ‘Italian Chapel’ on Lambs Holm, one of the small islands between the Churchill barriers. The Italian Chapel was originally a Nissan Hut, converted into a place of worship, and decorated by Italian prisoners of war held here in the 1940s. It was a bizarre place: very Catholic; very Italian, (very kitsch - somewhat between a strawberry flan and the Sistine Chapel) and completely out of place among the islands’ bare and washed-out, protestant hillsides. After the ferry crossing we rode down the A9 to Inverness and then on to Fort William where we stayed the night at The Wild Geese, yet another hostel, which offered the most luxurious and comfortable bath of the trip.

22 March: From Fort William, We rode down to Glasgow and then on to Edinburgh. I’ve never been to either city before. Glasgow impressed, but Edinburgh grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. We didn’t have time that afternoon for anything other than a quick look round. We wandered up Princes Street in the New Town and down the Royal Mile in the old one, and then spent the rest of our time in the Scottish Art Gallery. On the way out of the city we parted company. Tim was on his way to stay with some friends and I was heading for a campsite at Musselborough. The parting was an unceremonious affair. I caught sight of my turning and veered off while Time rode straight ahead. I’m not sure he even sore my going ('Sore'?!!!! Must have been thinking of my bum when I wrote that). I don’t like staying at holiday parks as a rule but the site at Musselborough was an exception. There were a few occupied campervans or mobile homes, but I was the only camper there with a tent. The warden conducted me into a small, attractively walled garden full of daffodils and inhabited by birds and rabbits. I woke up the next morning to the sound of a woodpecker in a nearby tree.

23 March: I wasn’t yet ready to say goodbye to Edinburgh, so caught a bus back into the city from a bus stop just outside the campsite – and then did all the tourist things: I admired the castle on its basalt plug; walked up and down the Royal Mile; visited Charlotte Square; got a certificate for climbing to the top of the Scott Memorial; did a walking tour of the old city; looked in St Giles cathedral; went to Greyfriars cemetery and rubbed the nose of Greyfriars bobby; visited statues of David Hume and Adam Smith; pored over exhibits in the spectacularly interesting museum of Scotland; and yes, I even had a cup of tea in the café where JK Rowling wrote the first volume of Harry Potter. What a city! It’s as monumental as Vienna, but with a happy, human face – there is little that is pompous and overbearing about it. I was told that Glaswegians say it’s all fur and no knickers. And that may be so, or maybe not, but I loved it. It’s the most beautiful city I’ve ever visited.

24 March: I woke up early, intending to ride back down to Hertfordshire in one go. I didn’t get going though till after 11.00, partly because I woke up feeling groggy and not really ready for the day and partly because the café in Musselborough where I had breakfast took nearly forty minutes to cook my scrambled eggs. I didn’t mind though, I was happy just to sit at the table and watch the world go by, or read the joke book that they left on each of the tables. (Maybe waiting 40 minutes for scrambled eggs is normal for them.) I couldn’t help thinking that Musselborough sounds like something out of James Joyce or JK Rowling, but I couldn’t make my mind up which.)

The ride home was cold and wet and occasionally miserable. Throughout the morning and early afternoon, it rained or hailed and the wind blew and blew. On this occasion the wild and beautiful hillsides of the Scottish Lowlands failed to work their magic for me. On reaching the border, the weather changed dramatically and almost instantly: rain and grey cloud yielded to bright skies and skimpy sunshine. But it didn’t make much difference. I was still cold, and the traffic volume rapidly quadrupled, demanding my full attention. I had my only real panic of the trip at a service station on the M6 in Cumbria. It was miles from anywhere. I’d stopped to get fuel and something to eat only to discover that my debit card had stopped working. I tried to ring my bank from the public phone. (I had, of course, forgotten to take my new mobile.) The phone, however, failed to put me through and ate up the last of my spare cash. Eventually, one of the staff in the restaurant lent me his mobile so that I could ring the bank and get it the problem sorted.
The rest of the ride home remained cold and windy, growing chillier as the day wore on and the sun went down. I lost count of the number of times I had to stop off, and the number of cups of tea I drank at service stations to try to keep warm. I got home just after 11.00 pm. You need to take the rough with the smooth.
Last edited by sv-wolf on Thu Apr 02, 2015 5:54 am, edited 2 times in total.
Hud

“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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sv-wolf
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Re: SV-Wolf's Bike Blog

#1197 Unread post by sv-wolf »

blues2cruise wrote:Stay upright..... :P
Not so easy, I've realised, with a full 25 litre tank on the front and camping gear piled high on the back, blues. The poor old DR feels decidedly top heavy. Nearly lost it a couple of times, but only when walking it, not riding. I'm gradually getting used to it though. I got a call today, telling me that my camera is repaired. Will soon be able to put up a pic of DR in full touring kit.
Hud

“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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#1198 Unread post by blues2cruise »

Repaired your camera? It was new. They should have replaced it. :rant:

However...if it works and you're content with it...that is what matters.
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#1199 Unread post by sv-wolf »

Just as I felt, blues. I did try to persuade them to replace the camera, but though I was only using it for the first time I bought it back in January in readiness for the trip. Apart from taking a few pics around the house just to test it out, it then sat on my shelf for the next six weeks while I fretted, fumed and tore my hair out over all the bureaucracy and planning I had to go through. I now have it back. To be fair to Fuji, the shop sent it away on Wednesday and had it back the following Tuesday morning, which meant they repaired it within three days, which is pretty good going.

What bothers me though, is the thought that it might fall apart again on the trip. Once bitten...
Hud

“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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#1200 Unread post by sv-wolf »

First day on the road. Rode down to Dover this morning after final panic and caught the ferry across to France. Then rode the DR down the A26 to Epernay, just outside Reims, arriving just after dark. Here I experienced my first act of kindness towards strangers. Having spent half an hour wandering round this warren of a town lookin for the municipal campsite, a guy in a van shouted across to me. I explained what I was looking for and he said 'follow me!' He took me miles to the campsite - which was closed! I'm not holed up in a cheap but comfortable hotel, still trying to get my head around all this technology. Maybe my circuits are just incompatible with modernity.

I love French Roads - so much more civilised than English ones - much less busy. The landscape of Northern France is strange: hundreds of miles of low rolling hills, all pale greens, and browns and off whites, and all given over to agribusiness. You can often see right to the horizon with not a single tree or hedge to get in the way. And it is all extremely well groomed, and well ordered, not like joyously scruffy English landscape. It was the sight of graffiti on a motorway bridge that finally dispelled the impression of foreigness and made me feel at home. Slowly starting to relax into the journey. That's good for me. It usually takes a week or so for me to stop worrying about what could go wrong, and start enjoying just being here and thinking about what I actually want from the experience. France is an easy way in as I can get by comfortably in the language. It's Italy next, and I can't speak of a word of the lingo.
Hud

“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley

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